Welcome back! I’m game composer Winifred Phillips – my most recent game release is the Grammy Award-winning original music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord! Wizardry is the smash-hit 3D remake of the awesome 1981 dungeon-crawler (listen and download the soundtrack). This is part four of my series of articles based on the content of the lecture I gave at the Game Developers Conference 2025. My lecture (entitled “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music”) explored how music can help flesh out the world of a game by virtue of historical research and thematic construction. In order to make sure everyone can access this lecture (including those of us who couldn’t attend GDC 2025), I’m very pleased to share the content of this GDC lecture in an article series that includes the entire discussion, along with videos and some of the best supporting images.
In case you haven’t read the previous installments of this series, you can find them here:
In part three of this series, we heard a cross-section of the music I composed for the Wizardry Overworld, representing many facets of ordinary medieval life. Now, we’re about to move from the Overworld to the Underworld, and there’s nothing ordinary down there.
Welcome back! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and one of my latest game projects is the Grammy award-winning music for the smash-hit 3D remake of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord! (Listen and download the soundtrack.)
In this article, I’m presenting the second part of my article series containing the substance of my lecture, “A Score for Wizardry: World-Building Through Music,” from the Game Developers Conference 2025 (a top industry conference for game developers). Many of us in the game audio community can’t attend GDC, so I post the content of my GDC lectures every year in an article series that presents the full discussions, supported by many of the videos and illustrations from my lectures. Last month I posted part one of this series, in which we considered the history of the Wizardry video game and the factors that led to medieval and Renaissance musical choices for the structure of the Wizardry score.
Speaking of structure, let’s now take a moment to talk about the premise of the Wizardry game. The world of Wizardry centers on a medieval castle in an unnamed feudal kingdom led by a cruel and insane ruler.
As the game progresses, we learn that a powerful arcane amulet, once owned by this mad overlord, was stolen five years ago by a Wizard of great power and malice.
Tapping into the magic of the amulet, the Wizard crafted an elaborate dungeon directly beneath the castle, filled it with terrifying monsters, then hid at the very bottom of the maze.
The overlord, in his madness, decided that this subterranean deathtrap would be the perfect proving grounds in which to test prospective members of his elite guard.
That’s the premise of the game. You assemble expert adventurers willing to slice their way through this underground meatgrinder. If they aren’t all killed, they can return to the surface to rest, resupply, recruit new members, grab some training, and then head back into the maze.
So Wizardry is built around two worlds – the Overworld and the Underworld. The Overworld is a charming slice of medieval life, and the Underworld is a bloodsoaked murder tomb. But here’s the thing – the underlying gameplay mechanic from 1981 is still at play here. When you visit a shop in the Overworld, you’re looking at a series of menus. When you wander through the ominous passages of the Underworld maze, you’re seeing walls and doors, with some occasional skeletons on the floor. If these places were going to feel like living, breathing environments, the music would have to help them get there. So let’s start first with the music of the Overworld. This is where the fun begins.
The medieval period lasted from the late 400s A.D. to the mid 14th Century. It’s best known for the famous Golden Age of Chivalry, the Crusades, feudalism, and the construction of huge Gothic cathedrals. This is the period of history that I turned to when I started researching musical styles for the Wizardry Overworld.
Medieval music is an embarrassment of riches. It’s sophisticated enough to be entertaining to our modern ears (particularly as you move into the late medieval period) but it’s also got this alien vibe that makes it intriguing. Part of that weirdness rises from the emphasis on two intervals: the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth.
In modern music, we lean on triads. We think they’re beautiful. But medieval musicians thought triads were ugly. You could use them as passing tones, but if you’re coming to rest, it’s on a lovely, consonant 4th or 5th. Let’s listen to how that principle applied to my music for Wizardry.
Here’s some of the music I composed for the Training Grounds, where you prepare your adventurers for combat. Since the Training Grounds would have been pretty physically active, I employed some late medieval dance rhythms. This one is inspired by the popular Estampie – literally the “stamp.” I also used consistent 4ths and 5ths in the musical construction here, with thirds appearing only in passing:
Aside from this fundamental difference of harmonic opinion, medieval musicians had a ton of awesome instruments to choose from – so let’s take a look at a couple of instruments from the previous example. As a salute to the Viking conversations we had at the beginning of the project, I investigated Nordic instruments and settled on two nice Viking-style choices that wouldn’t have been out of place in the medieval period:
The nyckleharpa (a keyed fiddle, pictured right)
The talharpa (a bowed lyre, pictured left)
You just heard those two instruments prominently in the music of the Training Grounds. They worked exceedingly well together for drone-based compositions. Paired with the viola da gamba, these instruments firmly situated the score in an early historical period.
So that wraps up part two of this six-part article series on the music of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord! We’ll be continuing the discussion of the Overworld music in the next installment. In the meantime, here’s a behind-the-scenes commentary video I narrated, discussing the Training Grounds music in more detail:
If you’d like to learn more about composing music for video games, you can read my book, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music (published by the MIT Press).
Winifred Phillips is a video game composer whose latest project is her Grammy® Award-Winning original musical score for the video game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (listen to the official soundtrack on Spotify). Her Wizardry soundtrack has also won a Society of Composers & Lyricists Award. Phillips is known for composing music for games in many of the most famous and popular franchises in gaming: Assassin’s Creed, God of War, Total War, The Sims, LittleBigPlanet, Lineage, Jurassic World, and Wizardry. Her music for Sackboy: A Big Adventure garnered a BAFTA Award nomination. Phillips’ other awards include the D.I.C.E. Award, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards (including Music of the Year), and four Hollywood Music in Media Awards. She is the author of the award-winning bestseller A COMPOSER’S GUIDE TO GAME MUSIC, published by the MIT Press. An interview with her has been published as a part of the Routledge text, Women’s Music for the Screen: Diverse Narratives in Sound, which collects the viewpoints of the most esteemed female composers in film, television, and games. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Hey everybody! I’m video game music composer Winifred Phillips, author of the book A Composer’s Guide to Game Music. Since the publication of my book by the MIT Press, I’ve maintained a monthly series of articles designed to expand upon the content of that book and enable further exploration of related topics. Inspired by my more recent video game projects in popular franchises such as Jurassic World, Lineage, and Sackboy, these articles have delved into subjects ranging from interactivity, to music theory, to business and networking.
The sheer number of articles has necessitated the inclusion of a navigation tool, so I now include an annual “Big Index” that can assist us in finding our way through the content that’s accumulated over the years. What follows is that index, organized by general subject matter. New to the index are articles from the past year that have engaged in more detailed and technical discussions of music theory-related topics, with deep dives into non-diatonic construction that included atonal and polytonal composition. I’ve also included the transcripts of my interviews with National Public Radio and the BBC that took place in 2023.
Welcome! I’m game music composer Winifred Phillips, and just before the holidays I was ecstatic to learn that my music for the Jurassic World Primal Ops video game was nominated for a Society of Composers & Lyricists Award! In all the excitement following the announcement of the SCL Awards nominees, many budding game composers reached out to me for advice regarding their own career trajectories. I found myself referring many of them to articles I’ve written in this space over the years – articles covering the widely diverse topics that interest us as game composers.
Since 2014, this series of articles has explored the evolving state of our industry and the tools and techniques that can help us make great game music. Over time, these articles have become a fairly deep repository of information. After referring so many budding composers to articles in this lengthy series, it has occurred to me that this sizable collection has become quite difficult to navigate – partially due to the many topics that have been explored over the years.
Discussions have included many of the creative challenges that make our profession unique. Through an examination of the structure of interactive music systems, numerous dynamic composition techniques have been investigated. Along the way, we’ve pondered how game music composition has been accomplished in the past, and where it might be going in the future. A profusion of resources have been collated in these articles – including the best methods to find gigs, and awesome networking opportunities that can benefit a game composer’s career. There have also been examinations of resources that can keep us inspired and creatively energized.
Together, these articles constitute a living document about game music composition. However, they definitely need an index at this point. With that in mind, I’m offering this ‘big index’ of articles I’ve shared over the years, organized by subject matter. We can navigate around this index using the following menu:
Delighted you’re here! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips. Welcome to the fifth and concluding installment in this article series based on my Game Developers Conference 2022 presentation, “Composing for Lineage M: Modular Construction in Game Music.” You’ll find the entire contents of my GDC lecture in these articles, accompanied by all of the included videos and some of the images from the Powerpoint presentation I used during my conference session.
During the previous four articles in this series, we learned about how NCSoft ported the original world-famous Lineage PC game from 1998 to mobile devices under the name Lineage M. We discussed how the launch of brand-new DLC content for this mobile port raised an unusual conundrum. How does a modern game composer create new music that will work effectively within a game engine originally devised in the 1990s? In the previous articles of this series, we discussed the popular DLC release of Lineage M: The Elmor, and I described what it was like creating new music for such an awesome game with an amazingly long history and enduring fanbase.
So happy you’ve joined us! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips, and this is the fourth article in my series based on my Game Developers Conference 2022 presentation, “Composing for Lineage M: Modular Construction in Game Music.” I’ve included the content of my GDC lecture in these articles, along with the videos and some of the images I used in my Powerpoint presentation during the conference.
In the first three articles of this series, we discussed the port of the popular Lineage PC game from 1998 to mobile devices under the name Lineage M, and the subsequent launch of brand-new content for this world-famous game in the DLC release Lineage M: The Elmor.
Welcome! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips. I’m glad you’re here for this third article in my series based on my Game Developers Conference 2022 lecture, “Composing for Lineage M: Modular Construction in Game Music.” My GDC presentation explored the top creative and technical challenges of creating a flexible music system for a game with a retro design. This article series shares most of the content of that GDC presentation, along with the videos I included in my presentation at the conference.
In the first two articles of this series, we explored the power and awesome popularity of retro gaming. We reviewed the history of the world-famous Lineage video game franchise, including how the original Lineage PC game from 1998 found its way to modern mobile devices in 2017 under the name Lineage M. I shared my experience as the chosen composer of the music for a new DLC release for Lineage M, and what it was like composing the first new gameplay music for the original Lineage MMORPG in over 24 years.
Hey everybody! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips. Thanks for joining me for this second article in my series based on my Game Developers Conference 2022 lecture, “Composing for Lineage M: Modular Construction in Game Music.” In my GDC presentation, I discussed my work composing music for a recent installment in the famous Lineage franchise (one of the most popular MMORPG game series ever made). This article series will share the content of that GDC talk, along with the audiovisual samples I included in my presentation at the conference.
Hello there! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips. At the most recent Game Developers Conference, I was pleased to present a lecture as part of the conference’s audio track. GDC is a top video game industry conference, packed with expert sessions supplemented by an array of awesome opportunities to network and learn. Whenever I give a GDC presentation, I like to include the content of my lecture in my articles here, so I’m now kicking off a five-part series of articles based on my presentation in March! In these articles, I’ve included the substance of my GDC presentation, along with most of the multimedia materials I used to illustrate concepts during my lecture. So let’s get started!
Hello there! I’m video game composer Winifred Phillips. Next week, I’ll be giving a lecture during the Game Developers Conference 2021 event. During my lecture, I’ll be talking about the music I composed for Sumo Digital for both the Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Spyder video games. My lecture is entitled, “From Spyder to Sackboy: A Big Adventure in Interactive Music,” and will take place on Friday July 23rd at 3:40pm PT. Although GDC is still an all-virtual affair, the event does provide lots of opportunities for experts within the game development community to share their knowledge, coupled with forums enabling game audio folks to network and learn from each other. In addition to my prepared lecture, I’ll also be participating in a live Speaker Q&A that will take place right after my presentation. It should be a lot of fun! Really looking forward to sharing my experience working with Sumo Digital simultaneously on these two fantastic games.
This was an incredibly rare and awesome opportunity for me to compose music for two projects simultaneously in development by the same company. Because of this, I found the comparisons between the two games fascinating.
My talk will delve into the mechanics of the dynamic music systems in both games, showing how a comparison between these two projects can shed some light on the utility of the top interactive techniques and strategies. While comparing this list of interactive music techniques provided me with a lot of material for my GDC lecture, there were other ways in which the two projects were similar. I thought I’d share some brief thoughts on one of the other common threads I found between these two Sumo Digital games.
As composers, we’re often asked to provide a general atmosphere that adds either character to gameplay or distinctive flavor to menus. If it’s a horror game, maybe we’re being asked to provide a crushingly heavy drone of doom during tense exploration, with soul-shuddering tone clusters bubbling up from the darkness and then sinking back down into the murky depths. For a whimsical game, we might be creating airy, open textures with little mischievous accents from the mallets or woodwind section… or maybe we’re creating a brightly whimsical melody for an opening menu or splash screen. If it’s a fantasy roleplaying game, we may be providing softly ambient tracks for exploration, with a pensive flute wandering gently through Gaelic figures. Or maybe we’re creating a thunderously epic main theme for an opening menu, designed to emphasize the world-shattering stakes of the adventure to come.
Winifred Phillips is a video game composer whose latest project is her Grammy® Award-Winning original musical score for the video game 
showing how a comparison between these two projects can shed some light on the utility of the top interactive techniques and strategies. While comparing this list of interactive music techniques provided me with a lot of material for my GDC lecture, there were other ways in which the two projects were similar. I thought I’d share some brief thoughts on one of the other common threads I found between these two Sumo Digital games.